


A Constant Companion in a Life of Continual Menace

by antediluvian



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemons, Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 19:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10771113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antediluvian/pseuds/antediluvian
Summary: “I am not sure this is a good idea,” Tigglewen said. “In fact, I am sure it is a terrible one. It’s too easy. It’s a trap.”Although Rincewind's daemon was whispering, her whisper was very forceful.





	1. The Spell and the Octavo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughablyunimportant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughablyunimportant/gifts).



> Thanks to Twitch for bidding for me on the Fandom Trumps Hate auction and for being so patient with how long it took! Their request was for a set of AU vignettes of scenes from the Discworld books re-written so that Rincewind has a daemon. I had so much fun writing this!
> 
> And many many thanks to [Afrai](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/afrai) and [imperfectcircle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectcircle) for being excellent beta readers. They fixed my typoes, smoothed my clunky sentences, and provided many excellent suggestions. Any remaining mistakes or typoes are entirely my own! <3
> 
> And thanks to my friends Grace and Luke, for helping me to decide everyone's daemons. 
> 
> Books vignetted from:  
>  _The Colour of Magic_  
>  _Sourcery_  
>  _Eric_  
>  _The Last Hero_
> 
> A few bits of text and dialogue are lifted wholesale from the series.

Rincewind peered cautiously around the corner of the hallway. The coast seemed to be clear. That was worrying. When something seemed too good to be true, it usually was. Worry was one of Rincewind’s mainstays, even after the veritable lake of cheap beer that he had consumed to muster up the nerve to come on this venture.

Then he shivered, because someone had just stuck their whiskery nose into his ear.

“I am not sure this is a good idea,” Tigglewen said. “In fact, I am sure it is a terrible one. It’s too easy. It’s a trap.”

Although his daemon was whispering, her whisper was very forceful.

It was a stupid bet, they both agreed on that.

“You’re tickling me,” Rincewind complained, equally soft. “And I agree. We should probably just turn back. Except that is probably what they’re expecting.”

The Bet had come about in part because of the unfortunate phenomenon of Too Much Beer for Men Too Young To Handle It and in part because of some largely good-natured ribbing about Rincewind’s thus far abysmal failure to separate himself from Tigglewen - ribbing that had gone something like:

_You’re not even a real wizard yet, you can’t even go somewhere without your daemon, Rinsey._

_Oh yeah? That’s not the only thing that makes a wizard. It’s not even the main thing. Magic is the main thing._

_Yeah, well can you do that?_

_Yeah, I can._

_Prove it, then._

_I will! I’ll prove it right from the sodding Octavo itself._

_Alright, then. Bet you a pint you don’t._

_Bet you a pint I do._

But even if the Bet was stupid, it _was_ a bet.

And it was a bet in a magical institution.

Rincewind didn’t like to think about the consequences of welching on a bet in that particular context.

“That’s true,” Tigglewen said. “Hold on.”

She scampered lightly down his robes and dropped onto the floor, peering around the hall, her little ferret nose twitching. “Only old smells,” she said, after a moment. Then she sneezed. “And magic.”

“Amazing,” Rincewind muttered. “Magic in a University of Magic.”

He took a deep breath. It felt as though the warm comforting fog of beer was wearing off. It was imperative that he get moving before it did.

“C’mon, Tig,” he said, crouching to scoop her up. Her belly was warm against his palms, and he bundled her against his chest.

There was another flight of stairs down into the cellars. Rincewind paused at the bottom, listening to the suspiciously resonant silence for a moment. He would not ordinarily have described himself as someone who felt compelled to do things, unless those things were Running Away, or Surviving to Live Another Day, which tended to dovetail nicely with each other.

But now.

“If we lose the bet,” Tig said darkly.

That unspoken _If_. The consequences were unclear and all the more menacing for it.

The Bet drove Rincewind onwards.

Tigglewen’s claws prickled his skin through his robes.

Deep, deep in the dark hind parts of Rincewind’s brain, he thought, _it isn’t just the Bet_.

But if he followed that thought down into those deep dark brain parts, Rincewind thought that he also might find Terror and Sobriety, and then he would definitely lose the Bet.

Somewhere between the rooftop terrace currently above the Conservatory of Healing Herbs And Mysterious Mystical Plants and the bottom of the stairs down into the cellars, the bet had become the Bet. Losing it was unthinkable.

And so Rincewind found himself outside a door of heavy wood lined with grey lead set into strange configurations.

He expected it to be locked. He half-dreaded that it wouldn’t be.

It wasn’t.

The door swung open slowly, without a single ominous creak.

Under the weight of magic in the room, Rincewind felt his blessed beer fog begin to lift.

The Octavo was chained in the centre of the room. The small podium upon which it rested was wrought from iron, fashioned into a wickedly grinning gargoyle with razor sharp wings arching around and over the Book.

Rincewind strode forward quickly, impelled by blind panic as much as anything else.

There was a terrible sibilant hissing rising up from Rincewind's unconscious mind, through his sub-conscious, and continuing inexorably upward. He was afraid that once it reached his conscious mind, he might actually understand it.

And then he did.

_Once,_ it said, in a voice as unlike Tigglewen's voice as it could be, _they tethered me to a pillar of plain iron._

Rincewind froze.

He froze because the voice wanted him to continue forward, and that was the most he could do to rebel.

In a room of wards, iron and lead, the Octavo had shaped its podium to suit its fancy. It had as much will as any wizard, if not more. In lieu of a soul, it had fashioned the semblance of one.

"Go back, go back," Tigglewen pleaded. She trembled against his neck, and trembled more as she scrambled down his arm, down his leg, shaking like a leaf as she scampered over the stone floor towards the Octavo's seat. 

"No," Rincewind said, or begged.

_Come forward, little ferret wizard._

Tigglewen rose on her hindquarters, her paws touching the dark iron. Ferrets were good climbers. 

Rincewind could not think what would happen if she reached the Octavo first, or if the Octavo reached her.

He unfroze.

Rincewind reached the podium at the same moment Tigglewen began to climb. He caught her with his right hand whilst his left, which didn't seem to be entirely under his control, caught the Book.

It flew open.

And the Spell rose like something vast and unknowable from the depths of parchment and ink, to earth itself behind Rincewind's eyes.

Later, the senior wizards found him. 

Later, Rincewind woke up.

He did not remember the Spell precisely. He only knew that it was there, like a hitchhiker squatting in his mind. 

Aside from the refusal of smaller, younger Spells to stay anywhere in its vicinity, it was a fairly unobtrusive Spell for something so mighty and old. Half the time, Rincewind was barely aware it was there. It wasn't as though he had been a particularly  _astounding_ wielder of arcane force prior to the Spell. Very little had changed, on the surface of things, once Rincewind recovered from the thrashing he got from the senior wizards.

But every now and again he thought about it. It occurred to him that the Spell must be  _for_ something. That was the nature of Spells.

If it ever needed to be cast, Rincewind intended to be a long, long way away. Even if he hadn't exactly worked out how he was going to manage that, given he was, for lack of a better word, the Spell's chosen mode of archive.

But Rincewind was good at crossing bridges when he came to them. Usually at speed.

 


	2. The Disc's First Tourist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Try to enjoy it_ , the Patrician had said. _You might learn something new about our great city._
> 
> Rincewind was prepared to agree that Ankh-Morpork might still have some surprises up its streets. He wasn’t quite prepared to agree that they would be enjoyable.

Everything was terrible. Rincewind had thought this before, but now he knew that previously he had been wrong. Previously things had just been bad. Now they were all definitely terrible.

“I have heard,” Vetinari said, “that wizards and their daemons can separate a great distance from each other. Is that true?”

“Yarrgh,” Rincewind croaked, and swallowed. “I mean, yes. Sir. Although we’re not supposed to reveal the mystical secrets of the magi—”

“And yet,” Vetinari said, slowly, thoughtful and terrible, “I have heard that you are never without yours, Rincewind.”

Rincewind froze. 

He had heard, of course, of the Patrician’s complex and nigh all-knowing web of spies and informants. But knowing about such a thing was entirely different to discovering personally that it knew about you too.

Tigglewen’s heart pattered frantically against his own.

“Of course, that is probably mere rumour.” Vetinari smiled with his mouth only and snapped his fingers. “Certainly nothing we would ever need to put to the test.”

Rincewind forced a rictus smile. “Thank y-“

The Patrician said, “I would like to see your daemon. If you please.”

_No_ , Rincewind thought. But Tigglewen crept down his leg and out from under his robes, to crouch shivering beneath Vetinari’s impassive regard.

“And your name?” the Patrician asked.

“Tigglewen,” whispered the ferret. Her dark eyes were on the shadows behind Vetinari, where a softer shadow suddenly shifted. The Patrician’s brown-necked raven daemon, Adimena, shuffled forward on her perch.

“Of course,” Vetinari said, “for a _wizard_ I am sure it is no trouble at all to assure our guest’s safety in our illustrious city.”

Rincewind tried not to look at the sable sharpness of Adimena’s beak, or to think about how easy it would be for her to swoop down upon Tigglewen.

“No, my lord,” he said.

**********

Twoflower’s arrival in Ankh-Morpork had undoubtedly changed things. The little man didn’t so much weave through the jostling crowds as bounce along on their ebb and flow, cheerful and strange and so obviously not Ankh-Morporkian that it was as though he wore a target skewing the city’s attention toward him. And he didn’t do anything to try to _avoid_ that attention. It was as though he had never heard of Cutpurse Alley or the Seamstresses.

It meant that Rincewind was wound so tight, he made a violin string look as though it had just spent two weeks sitting on the beach sipping margaritas. 

It wasn’t, he reflected, as though he he had never been afraid in Ankh-Morpork before. Ankh-Morpork was a vast city of myriad things and many of them inspired feelings from the fear spectrum. It was just Rincewind had always prided himself on his ability to avoid most of the situations that involved the downright screaming terror end of the spectrum, and generally stay pretty close to the general unease, anxiety, and manageably afraid end of it.

All things considered, Rincewind supposed he should have known better than to approach Twoflower. No one with a fistful of softly gleaming gold and a trunk of sapient pearwood was ever going to bring anything with them apart from danger and trouble. 

Some might have said such people brought adventure with them. Rincewind knew better than that; adventure was just danger and trouble by another more romantic name.

That was why he had tried to leave Ankh-Morpork. Swiftly. By a horse whose primary characteristic was _fast._ While such a departure could be described as “fleeing”, Rincewind had no qualms with fleeing and, indeed, would often consider it the wisest course of action, he disliked the implications of the word and preferred “judicious exit at speed”.

And should the first judiciously speedy exit be foiled, Rincewind ordinarily saw no harm in attempting it again. In fact, such persistence in retreating from the face of adversity was, he thought, part of what made man great. Certainly it was what kept him alive.

He eyed Twoflower’s back tiredly. It was still knife-free. That, Rincewind supposed, was one good thing about the day. 

_Try to enjoy it_ , the Patrician had said. _You might learn something new about our great city._

Rincewind was prepared to agree that Ankh-Morpork might still have some surprises up its streets. He wasn’t quite prepared to agree that they would be enjoyable.

Twoflower had stopped to use the picture box on a trio of slender-faced young men who were performing a street show that involved moving an assortment of brightly coloured cups around and cajoling their audience to guess under which one was the shiny false coin they had held up to draw their audience in the first place. 

Rincewind had seen this show before and so rather than watch it again, he looked for its shadowy second, the fourth slender-faced young man who wove between the audience members and relieved them of selected goods without their knowledge.

Vetinari had been very… _specific_ about not allowing anything to happen to Ankh-Morpork’s first tourist. 

Basthara, Twoflower’s capybara daemon, came to lean against his foot. Rincewind didn’t dare shake her off. “The coin is under the yellow cup,” she told him happily. “Tigglewen saw it first.”

“Don’t ruin the fun for everyone else,” Rincewind muttered, because the last thing he needed was four furious thieves after him for ruining their business. Basthara chuffed contented amusement and flopped over to bask in the weak sunshine.

“Don’t worry so much,” she told him. “Everything is OK. We see the funny show, then we go to find some tasty food, OK? It’s nice here.”

“Sure,” Rincewind said, unconvinced. He glanced at Tigglewen, who was sniffing at the Luggage from a cautious distance.

“Good,” Basthara said comfortably. “Everything is OK.”

Of course, later that night the city caught fire, reconfirming Rincewind’s belief that everything was - now - terrible.


	3. A Short Sourcerous Trip to the Dungeon Dimensions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The octarine light was turning black around the edges. It was beginning to look more like a door, Rincewind thought. And there were whispering, hissing, buzzing noises coming from it.
> 
> Terror and conscience fought a brief and bloody war.
> 
> “We have to help him,” Tigglewen whispered, his heart’s own voice, and Rincewind’s feet moved of their own accord.

Rincewind would have given very nearly anything to be somewhere other than where he was now, standing at the top of the tower of sourcery.But here he was. Staring into a growing ball of octarine light that was cold and terrible to look at, its brilliance searing his eyes. Somewhere in that ball of light was the staff, and the sourcerer who had tried to discard it. The boy.

The other wizards on the top of the tower seemed to be of a similar mind to Rincewind. They were retreating cautiously.

Somehow this stopped Rincewind’s own retreat.

“Aren’t we going to help him?” he asked.

“I’m sorry.” Hakardly said. He was sweating.

“He just did what _you_ wanted,” Tigglewen said desperately.

The wizards continued their inexorable retreat. As people who dealt routinely with the arcane, wizards had an excellent sense of self-preservation. After all, they weren’t given the opportunity to fail at it more than once.

The octarine light was turning black around the edges. It was beginning to look more like a door, Rincewind thought. And there were whispering, hissing, buzzing noises coming from it.

Terror and conscience fought a brief and bloody war.

“We have to help him,” Tigglewen whispered, his heart’s own voice, and Rincewind’s feet moved of their own accord.

He leapt for the staff, and he leapt for the fire.

It was so cold it burned.

It was so dark it hurt.

And then it was nothing.

 

**********

 

The scattered fragments of Rincewind’s mind slowly knitted themselves back together around a sharp tender pain.

He woke.

It was not sudden, this waking. It happened in stages and it went something like, _Ah, so this is my arm. I have an arm. And at the end of it are fingers. I have fingers._

And so forth, until Rincewind had established that he had indeed retained all of his limbs.

He didn’t dare examine that savage new hurt at the heart of himself.

Because Rincewind was alone. The sourcerer, Coin, lay nearby, face down, but Rincewind was alone.

He had never been alone before.

He groped numbly for his hat. It seemed that too was something that was now gone.

He was alone.

Once, Vetinari had said to him, _I have heard that wizards can be separate from their daemons_.

It was one of the many secrets of wizardry. Historians of magic wrote in their marginalia that it was something stolen from the witches of Lancre originally, this ability to range away from your daemon, from your heart and soul.

It was, as Vetinari had somehow already known, something that Rincewind had never managed.

But thinking about it now was too terrible and terrifying to be born, so Rincewind turned his attention to his surroundings instead.

Only to immediately wish that he had not.

There was a strange and terrible light where there should have been sky. Not too far away, but not close enough either, there was a column of wavering daylight that swayed and hummed. Within it, Rincewind saw curved shapes that may have been familiar buildings. It was hard to tell. He couldn’t see that clearly, because of the shadowy shapes converging on it.

He knew where he was now.

He knew what those shapes were.

Rincewind was suddenly sharply grateful that he couldn’t see them clearly.

And that Tigglewen, dear, beloved Tigglewen, was not here with him.

He rolled over with a stifled grunt of effort and reached out for Coin’s still form. He shook the boy, the sourcerer, until Coin’s eyes opened.

Somehow Rincewind managed to speak around the deafening fog of terror and loss. After he had finished explaining that they were in the Dungeon Dimension and that the world was quite likely to end unless they intervened, and possibly would still end even if they did, he took off his last remaining sock and filled it with sand.

Then he told Coin when to run.

“I really wish,” he said, to no one in particular, because Tigglewen was not there with him, “that I wasn’t here.”

And he ran towards the nearest Thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bits of dialogue and text taken from _Sourcery_.


	4. Summon a Demon, Get a Free Rincewind (And No Demon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rincewind didn’t know _quite_ how long he had been in the Dungeon Dimensions. Time was… strange there. It was hard to measure it passing when you were running as far and as fast as you could while being chased by Things that nightmares had nightmares about.
> 
> But he was quite sure that no amount of time in the Dungeon Dimensions could turn you into a demon. Well, fairly sure.
> 
> He didn’t _feel_ like a demon.

“I warn you,” the table said sternly. “I’m protected by many powerful amulets.”

“Jolly good,” replied Rincewind. “I wish I was.”

He didn’t _appear_ to be in the Dungeon Dimensions anymore. For one thing, he wasn’t running. And the reason he wasn’t running was that nothing was chasing him.

Rincewind looked around and decided that he definitely wasn’t in the Dungeon Dimensions. He was, however, inside a magic circle.

For summoning demons.

Rincewind didn’t know _quite_ how long he had been in the Dungeon Dimensions. Time was… strange there. It was hard to measure it passing when you were running as far and as fast as you could while being chased by Things that nightmares had nightmares about.

But he was quite sure that no amount of time in the Dungeon Dimensions could turn you into a demon. Well, fairly sure.

He didn’t _feel_ like a demon.

“Right,” he said, slowly. “I think… I think there may have been just the tiniest bit, the eeeensiest bit of confusion here.”

“Don’t you think you can lure me to my doom with thy lying tongue, o fiend of Shamharoth,” said the table, or rather, the voice coming from behind it. “I am learned in the way of demons—“

“I’m really not a demon,” Rincewind said, a trifle desperately.

Finally the speaker emerged from behind the table. It was very short and bedecked with so many amulets and charms, Rincewind was surprised it was still upright. It wore glasses.

“Then where’s your daemon?” it demanded triumphantly. Its own guinea pig daemon rootled happily in its arms.

Rincewind opened his mouth. Closed it. The bruising absence of Tigglewen was no less tender for the time Rincewind had spent in the Dimensions.

“See,” the figure said smugly, pushing its glasses up on its nose and peering at Rincewind. “Daemons don’t have demons.”

“I don’t need this,” Rincewind said shortly. He went to walk out of the circle and froze as it suddenly flared up, sparking and spitting like fat in a pan.

Rincewind took a slow, deep breath.

“Contrary to what this,” he waved a hand at the circle, “might suggest, I. Am. Not. A. Demon.”

“How come you answered the conjuration then?” the figure said. “Just passing through the paranatural dimensions, were you?”

“Something like that,” Rincewind said.

He had never thought of himself as a religious man, but he _had_ prayed sometimes in the Dimensions, as he ran. It had been Rincewind’s own particular form of prayer, which was, “Oh shit oh shit oh shitohshitohshitohshit”. It was a prayer that was often synchronised with the rhythm of his running feet, and sometimes punctuated by a short scream.

Somehow, Rincewind didn’t think it was the kind of prayer that yanked you out of a living nightmare and deposited you in a much safer place somewhere else.

“Pull the other one,” said the figure. “It has got bells on. I’m a demonologist, you see. You can’t trick me. I wanted to summon a demon, so I did— I wrought my conjurings and I concentrated on my demon and here you are! It worked! I, Eric Thursley, summoned a demon! Hah!”

“Not exactly,” someone else said. Apologetic. _Familiar_.

Rincewind’s heart found his throat. Hope blurred his eyes and the lithe brown shape that slid around the table and paused at the edge of the circle.

The demonologist’s daemon shrieked in surprise. So did the demonologist.

Rincewind fell to his knees.

“I wanted to summon my wizzard,” Tigglewen said. “And so I did.”

She scampered into the circle, and into Rincewind’s waiting hands. He buried his face against her.

Rincewind had thought he might not ever see her again.

Her wet little nose found his.

“Is that a daemon?” Eric demanded. He sounded outraged.

Rincewind ignored him.

“He’s just a kid,” Tigglewen whispered, but not quite quietly enough.

“I’m fourteen,” Eric said indignantly.

Rincewind looked up at that. His eyes still didn’t seem to be working properly. It was probably the magic circle.

“ _Now_ will you let me out?” he asked. “I’m clearly not a demon. I _have_ a daemon.”

“Hah!” Eric said. “Clearly just another demon, pretending to be _your_ daemon so you can trick me into letting you out!”

He didn’t sound entirely convinced, however.

Rincewind stared at him. It was a long, complicated stare, full of meaning. It said, _We both know this is ridiculous_.

Eric hesitated.

The chalk at the edge of the circle brightened again, became lines of brilliant fire against the scuffed floor. There was a distinct popping sound.

Something big and heavy landed in the circle with Rincewind and Tigglewen.

“Luggage!” Tigglewen cried joyfully, wiggling around in Rincewind’s arms so she could crinkle her nose at it.

The Luggage creaked its lid a little, then shuffled itself around on its hundreds of tiny callused feet to stare intimidatingly at Eric. It was all the more intimidating for the fact the Luggage had no eyes to stare with. Somehow it was more judgmental.

“I knew it!” Eric sounded relieved and triumphant. “You _are_ a demon! I nearly believed you when you said you weren’t! You’re really not very much to look at, after all. But you are! You _are!_ Now. I want the most beautiful woman who has ever lived, mastery of all the kingdoms of the world, and to live forever. Get on with it.”

Rincewind stared at him. “Just that?”

“Teenagers,” Tigglewen muttered. “It was the best I could find, sorry.”

“Well,” Eric said, practically dancing from foot to foot. “Go on. You’re supposed to disappear in a puff of smoke.”

All Rincewind wanted to do was crouch on the ground and run his hands over Tigglewen, re-learning her soft sinuous strength. The sharp prick of her claws against his hands and wrists told him she felt the same.

He stared at Eric with weary hostility.

“Listen,” he said, layering the sarcasm like armour, “do you think I can just snap my fingers—”

Rincewind snapped his fingers.

There was a puff of smoke.

“Oh look,” said Tigglewen weakly. “It’s the entire Disc.”

“It’s great,” said Eric. “I want it all.”

Rincewind closed his eyes. _Still better than the Dungeon Dimensions_ , he thought. But that was a rather low bar.

He had a feeling they were heading for trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bits of text and dialogue taken from _Eric_.


	5. The Last Hero and The Most Reluctant Not-Quite-A-Hero Who Sometimes Does Heroic Things But Is Really Trying To Give Them Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We could leave,” Tigglewen suggested, scampering along beside him.
> 
> “We’d end up on it anyway,” Rincewind said.
> 
> “Probably in worse circumstances,” Tigglewen agreed.
> 
> “Like being stuck on the outside,” Rincewind said, “instead of on the inside.”
> 
> They both shuddered.

When Rincewind heard that there was going to be a flying machine launching into space to circle the Disc and stop Cohen from blowing up the gods, he put his head in his hands. The gossip mill at the Unseen University had worked at its usual impressive speed, which meant the news arrived shortly after lunch, which had been a feast par excellence. It had included thirty pies of five different varieties and potatoes cooked in six different ways with ten different sauces and those were just the highlights for Rincewind. The list of food could go on nigh ad infinitum given the capacious resources of both the University’s pantry and stomachs of the Faculty. Rincewind had acquitted himself as well as any other senior member of the faculty.

He regretted that now. The amount of pie and potato he had consumed did not sit well with the incredibly detailed and explicit mental image he had of flying around the Disc in, well, anything. He had seen over the Edge once. That had been more than enough for one lifetime and, Rincewind was sure, _would_ have been enough for one lifetime if that lifetime had not been his own.

“We could leave,” Tigglewen suggested, scampering along beside him.

“We’d end up on it anyway,” Rincewind said.

“Probably in worse circumstances,” Tigglewen agreed.

“Like being stuck on the outside,” Rincewind said, “instead of on the inside.”

They both shuddered.

It took trying to volunteer for three of the wrong sub-committees before Rincewind and Tigglewen found the Miscellaneous Committee and staggered through the door.

Several important faces turned expressions of polite inquiry toward him.

“I do not wish to volunteer for this mission,” Rincewind told the nearest one, which belonged to Vetinari.

“Ah,” said Lord Vetinari. “Rincewind the Wizzard.”

He said it with what was, surely, unnecessary sibilance.

“We see you have your daemon back,” said his daemon, Adimena.

“Tigglewen, wasn’t it?” said Lord Vetinari. “Anyway. I do beg your pardon. You were saying…?”

“I do not wish to volunteer for this mission,” Rincewind repeated desperately, “ _sir._ ”

“No one was asking you to.” Lord Vetinari said. Adimena made a short leap to land on his shoulder, cocking her head to inspect them.

“Oh, but they will,” Rincewind said wearily. “Someone will say: hey, that Rincewind fella, he’s the adventurous sort, he _knows_ the Horde, Cohen seems to like him, he knows all there is to know about cruel and unusual geography, he’d be just the man for a job like this.”

“And we would run away, and probably hide in a crate somewhere that would be loaded on to the flying machine in any case,” Tigglewen concluded.

“Really?” said Lord Vetinari, looking a trifle intrigued.

“Probably, sir. Or there’ll be a whole string of accidents that end up causing the same thing. Trust me, sir. I know how my life works. So I thought I’d better cut through the whole tedious business and come along and tell you I don’t wish to volunteer.”

“I think you’ve left out a logical step somewhere,” said the Patrician.

“No, sir,” Rincewind said. “It’s very simple. I’m volunteering. I just don’t _wish_ to. But, after all, when did that ever have anything to do with anything?”

“He’s got a point,” said Ridcully. “He seems to come back from all sorts of—”

“You see? I’ve been living my life for a long time.” Rincewind said. Tigglewen rose up on her hindquarters, one paw lightly grasping his robe. Rincewind scooped her up. “I know how it works.”

“You must be, I think,” said Lord Vetinari, “the only wizard whose daemon did not fix in the shape of a bird.”

Rincewind looked at him. The Patrician wore an expression of polite and mild interest.

“No,” Rincewind said, Tigglewen’s spine a warm delicate arch under his palm. “I never was much of a one for flying.”

“And yet,” said Lord Vetinari. “Here we are.”

Rincewind nodded slowly.

“Well, Havelock,” boomed Ridcully cheerfully. “I think we can accept the boy’s pledge as a volunteer, can’t we? Might be just the spot of luck we need.”

 _Oh_ , thought Rincewind dismally. _Don’t say that_.

Lord Vetinari’s polite smile did not diminish a whit at being called Havelock. Its vestigial warmth did, however, ebb away from his eyes.

“Indeed,” he said. “Who are we to trifle with Fate?”

Rincewind nodded to them both and turned to leave. He had wondered if, by taking Fate into his own hands, he would feel empowered. But it turned out the whole prospect of a trip around the Disc remained just as terrifying as when Rincewind first heard of it and had spent twenty minutes trying to calculate how to stay as far away from the probably doomed venture as possible.

Once away from the polite stares of the Archchancellor and the Patrician (and everyone else in the room, who had been insufficiently terrifying to detract attention from the latter person), Rincewind leaned back against the wall.

“You don’t have to come,” he told Tigglewen. He could feel the racing of her heart against his palm, where he cradled her against his chest. “You could stay here. Safe.”

They could do that now. They could be apart from each other, ever since the Dungeon Dimensions had swallowed Rincewind whole and spat him out a world away from his heart and soul.

“No,” Tigglewen said, echoing his innermost thought, “not again. _Never_ again. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it together.”

It was a nice moment. Of course, Rincewind thought, that probably meant everything was about to become absolutely terrible again. Given that they had just volunteered - _volunteered_ \- to be flown around the Disc in a flying machine largely constructed from human ingenuity and what Rincewind feared was mathematics, “terrible” seemed a reasonable prognosis for the future.

“Come on,” he said to Tigglewen. “We might as well get on with it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bits of text and dialogue taken from _The Last Hero_.


End file.
